Maybe the boy broke the bucket. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just found the broken bucket, in the school’s premises. But, about what happened next, there seems to be little dispute. When Aslam Ansari, a Std. IV student at a government school in Betul, Madhya Pradesh, informed his teachers about his discovery, they began to beat him. The boy collapsed. His parents took him to a hospital, where severe backbone and neck injuries were diagnosed. They couldn’t afford treatment at this hospital, so they went to another one. There, the boy was declared dead. In the December 18, 2012, issue of The Hindu, Krishna Kumar, Professor of Education at Delhi University and a former Director of NCERT, made this tragedy the focus of his Opinion Page story. He said, “[The people] who brutally hit [the boy] got access to his body because they were recruited to serve as teachers. The court must ask on what grounds did the state satisfy itself that such persons could look after the welfare and rights of a small boy...”

Prema Rangachary, the 71-year-old director of Vidya Vanam, an education initiative for tribal and underprivileged children, was deeply disturbed by this story. Her first response was to write a piece titled “Teachers, tread softly on children’s dreams”, which appeared in the February 4, 2013, issue ofThe Hindu. She wrote, “Who gives this authority over the mind and body of the student to the teacher? Is it the state? Or is it the school? Or is it the society... So where do we fail? Is it faulty training? Is it teacher selection? Or is it the failure to understand the purpose of education?” The questions outnumbered the answers. She decided that something more needed to be done...........click for more

Source: The Hindu

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